First, we interviewed the doctor working in Qilu Hospital, knowing that current effective and relative safe treatment of colon cancer is surgery. But some patients are not willing to accept it because the surgery needs to cut out anus, and sometimes consequent infections may be lethal. Doctors never tried gene therapy. Molecular targeted anti-tumor agents are sometimes used. Nonetheless, the price of drugs is very high, most of the patients can not afford it. So we were going to develop a gene therapy for colon cancer with cheap and convenient way. Then we participated in 5th Cancer Parents' Association and Mutual Organization Meeting as volunteers to know more about cancer treatment questions. And we did some survey to achieve some valuable informations as followings.

Interviewing doctors working in Qilu Hospital

On August 24th, Qi Lu hospital offered us a great opportunity for communicating with doctors. It was surely meaningful to all of us. The cool experience we had was to exchange our ideas with the doctors as well as to have a counsel for our next step about our project. The doctors were surgeons of healing the colon cancer. During the communication, we enquired many questions. Here are the details:(S=Students, D=doctor)

1.Diagnosis of Colon Cancer

S: How to diagnose colon cancer?

D: Many people are diagnosed by routine check-ups. We suggest that people who are over 45 years old check their health situation every year. Using enteroscope, doctors can identify the polyp inside the colon. We normally cut out the polyps as long as it occurs. Small polyps can be cut by endoscopic resection, however sometimes the polyps are too big so we do surgery. Because most of the tumor comes from the deteriorated polyps. It required at least 7-10 to turn polyps into tumor. The definite diagnosis are made by the final analysis of pathological examinations.

2.Therapy of Colon Cancer

S: What are the general treatments of colon cancer?

D:Surgery. It is still effective and relatively cheap.

S: Are there any adjuvant therapy after surgery? For example: chemotherapy?

D: This depends on the states of illness. There are different standards to define the states. T1-T4 stands for the invasion of tumor. N stands for lymph node and M, stands for the movements of cancer. At the very early stage, only the surgery is enough for patients, the survival rate is quite high. We only use chemotherapy seldom as a precaution.

S: Is the surgery risky for patients?

D: Surgery in colon rarely cause haemorrhage as it doesn’t involve massive blood vessels. However, the risk of infection is relatively high. The mortality of that was high in the past but drops sharply these years. After all, it is relatively safe.

S: Are there any molecular targeted anti-g agents that are come into use?

D: Yes. Some are oral treated while others are intravenous injection. Some are already used in clinic.

S: Are there any gene therapy take places in hospital?

D: No. We only use technology that are already matured.

S: What is the most thorny problem in the treatment of colon cancer?

D: I believe that is the attitudes of some patients. As the surgery of colon cancer need to cut out anus. Some patients felt unacceptable. Hence, they delay the surgery to find if there are any possible treatments to prevent that. Nevertheless, most likely they failed and bungle their illnesses.

S: What about the fares? Can most of the families afford that?

D: The fare of the surgery is not so high. About 60000 yuan. And most likely the medical insurance can help with half of that. So the final may be just 20-30 thousands. However, the price of the molecular targeted drugs is high.

3.Prevention

S: How can people do to prevent the cancer? Would you like to give us some advices?

D: To be honest I believe that most of the factors that cause cancer are in your gene. But statistically the unhealthy habits do affects the morbidity of particular cancer. For example: the morbidity of stomach cancer in Japan and Korea is very high as they eat pickled food. So just try to maintain a good, healthy life style.

Participating in 5th Cancer Parents' Association and Mutual Organization Meeting as volunteers

Two members of our team,Vicky & David, volunteered for Chinese Parents of Children with Cancer and Mutual Aid Organization Communication for one day at 22 July 2017. During the communication, Vicky & David also collected the information of current colon cancer clinic situation, knowing the problem they widely concerned is the safety of gene therapy which helped us to improve our project well.

Do survey regarding cancer treamment and gene therapy

In order to know the public understanding and acceptance, we went to some public places to explain our project to the public with poster. We gave explanations to the public about gene therapy of colon cancer, which made more public understand gene therapy and our peoject, then they gave us the response for our questionnaire. From the survey we found that safety and cost of gene therapy are widely concerned problems. So we modified our project to introduce the plasmid suicide system and probiotics Nissle 1917 as plasmid delivery in our project for more safety and less cost. This propaganda and survey improved well our project.

Team:JNFLS/HP/Gold Integrated

JNFLS